The Next Bad Idea
The drum beats again
I cannot even believe I’m writing about this.
Of all the topics I could tackle—of all the vile, foul, repulsive, disgusting, hideous assignments I could take on in this space today—this is the one that fills me with the most overwhelming sense of gut-broiling dread. I’d rather sit down and hammer out a pro-bestiality screed or a pocket guide to copulating with family members. I’d rather take this clean, beige space and befoul it with a vibrant tract on the religious objects best converted to masturbatory purposes (for the record: rosary beads are tops).
But these are all ancillary considerations compared to what needs to be talked about, and again, I can’t even believe I need to say this: Let’s not start a goddamn war with Iran.
Likely, right now you’re thinking something along the lines of, “Oh, no kidding? Wow, Markley, what a daring insight. Because I thought we would do that, and then I’d give my newborn infant a bath by inserting her in the bottom rack of the dishwasher. Thanks for clearing that up for me.”
I agree. Your bitter condescension is completely warranted. Obviously any kind of military action against Iran seems like an idea so spectacularly bad it makes the concept of Saw IV look only like the overburdened plot of Saw II (I mean, how’d the dude retro-fit an entire house with steel walls? He had cancer! It makes no sense…).
After all, with the U.S. military busy with the “improving security situation” in Iraq, all we could really do is drop a couple of tactical bombs on installations we think maybe, might be places where Iran is working to build a nuclear weapon that may, at some point, be ready in the next ten years. Despite what you hear in the news, our intelligence agencies actually know very little about the Iranian nuclear program and how advanced it is (why does this sound familiar?). Or, for that matter, where it all is. It seems unlikely that even an extensive bombing campaign could guarantee success in anything but setting Iran back a few years.
What a nice shower of American piss and vinegar could do, however, is rally a growing, young, urban, Westernizing population around their jerkoff fundamentalist leaders, Ayatollah Khomeini and president Mahmoud "Gays Don't Exist In My Country" Ahmadinejad. The implications grow exponentially from there, from losing what little credibility we have left in the world to destabilizing another highly combustible Middle Eastern country.
In other words, it is simply a bad, bad idea with a miniscule upside and a downside as long and broad as the slope of a lunar crater. Yet here I am paying it attention like it’s not the most mind-fuckingly stupid thing you’ve ever heard; like it isn’t the nightmarish fantasy of a neo-conservative in the ranting depths of heroin withdrawal.
That’s because recently an air invasion of Iran has stopped sounding so outlandish.
The Washington chatter has picked up from a low, murmuring buzz to an outright wail. I feel now as I felt in those queasy days of late 2002, when Iraq loomed large in the news but still distant in the imagination. I kept thinking, We aren’t really going to do this, right? And I find myself saying the same thing now.
The scariest opinion comes from none other than my old, dear friend Pat Buchanan. Pat and I go way back—to a deserted Miami University bathroom where I heard him pass what sounded like a thrashing rat through his colon (true story, I swear). I heard Pat say the other day that the only way President George W. Bush could maintain his credibility would be to attack Iran, that he had literally talked himself into a corner without alternatives.
First of all, the words “George W. Bush” and “credibility” parted ways like Spears and Federline, with Bush taking the role of the no-talent dipshit who got where he was based on connections while “credibility” gained weight and flashed its stretched vagina all over Washington in hopes that enough attention might keep it viable.
However, I do see Buchanan’s point. By completely repudiating any chance for diplomatic engagement and by offering nothing more than his usual rowdy brand of Cowboy-macho, “bring ‘em on”, bullshit tough talk, Bush has left no option for himself on the table.
In the final paragraph of Robert Stone’s mesmerizing Vietnam drug-smuggling novel Dog Soldiers a vicious, corrupt cop named Antheil repeats his favorite saying: “If you think someone’s doing you wrong, it’s not for you to judge. Kill them first and then God can do the judging.”
If we move against Iran, this sentiment will work as a very apt description of our foreign policy. To be sure, Iran building a nuke is not something anyone wants to see, but using military force as the first option (okay, maybe first-and-a-half option) is absurd. It’s like if your neighbor began a noisy construction project, so you go over in the middle of the night and burn down his house.
And yet here we are. Those chattering heads on your TV are getting louder, which means more people are saying to each other behind the scenes that it might be on, which means the people behind the backdrops of the scenes are beginning to think it’s a go, which means that somewhere Dick Cheney has an erection.
The worst part about the whole thing is the sense of powerlessness. What could I do to stop this? What could you do? Should we all quit our jobs, go to D.C., and scream blind fury at the gates of the White House? I’d like to prattle on with some happy horseshit about writing a letter to your congressman or signing a petition or marching in a protest, but I stopped believing in the myth of responsive representative democracy around the same time I realized it was my mom taking my tooth and putting the dollar under my fucking pillow.
In the end, it will come down to the same group of people who led us so bravely into the sands of Iraq, how much fear they can juice into the American people, and how effectively they can cow the congress. Based on previous experience, my expectations are understandably grim.
It’s fairly simple: Those who lead us now lead by fear because they themselves are afraid. They are cowards unequipped with the strength to do the hard things, so they choose the easy, expeditious ones. They don’t have the patience or fortitude to do anything but the killing.
For all the rest, they look to God, hoping He can sort it out.
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